- Value chain analysis — how beans get form Guatemala to Costco. CIAT involved. Huge story.
- Brilliant. Via Aguanomics. Sky Vegetables.
Nibbles: Amazon, Aquaculture, Bees, ICTs, Food prices, Dates, Cats, Taro
- Not so pristine after all.
- Farming the sturgeon.
- Colony Collapse Disorder 101. And how floral scents affect pollinator behaviour.
- Presentation on how mobile phones are changing rural livelihoods.
- Urban food gardens to combat high food prices in South Africa. And a different approach in Madagascar.
- Getting dates in Saudi Arabia is becoming difficult.
- “Winged” cats.
- The importance of taro in Hawaii. Thanks, Tevita.
Nibbles: Poppies, Gardening, Milk, Grapes, Genebanks, Meat, Biotech, IK, Plant health
- Dropping the poppy.
- Gardening on windowsills and along roadsides.
- Cooling camel milk. Via.
- Fingerprinting grapes.
- “The seed banks that are run by agribusiness corporations would be a costly pursuit for the government and farmers.” Where to start responding to this? Thanks, Jeff.
- Further evidence of food price crisis.
- “What does biodiversity mean to Syngenta?“
- Traditional healer goes online. Via.
- Videos from Global Plant Clinic.
Nibbles: Diversified farming, Appropriate crops, Alcohol, IPR
- “Sangeeta also runs a farm-field school to teach farmers about vermin-compost, mushroom farming, bee keeping and dairy farming.”
- For the majority of Afghan farmers and sharecroppers, poppy cultivation is no less than a desperate survival strategy.
- “… human fondness for alcohol comes from our past seeking of energy rich plants.”
- Geoff Tansey, one of the authors, talks about the patenting of life at the launch of the IDRC book The Future Control of Food.
Agrobiodiversity hits the mainstream
Want proof that sustainable agriculture is firmly on the radar of the mainstream press? Newsweek has a piece this week on how Andean potato farmers are adapting to climate change. While Time sings an ode to the American “urban agricultural boom.”